The janitor/cleaning people had a strike at the train station! No one cleaned it for at least a month.  Finally this last week they resolved the problem and it got cleaned...but it got really gross

¿Hola que tal?

I hope everyone had a great Easter and had a chance to watch conference! It was so amazing!! I loved it, and I loved how it focuses on the family! I´m going to download all the talks and listen to them as I get ready each morning. I hope you all can do something similar! Study the talks again and I promise you´ll get much more out of it.

First things first.  Our schedule changed to summer schedule!!! It´s the best thing ever! Lemme just give you a run down of our day.

7:30 wake up, exercise, breakfast, etc (claro got to wake up a half hour early to get that P90X though)

9:00 studies

11:00 leave apartment

2:00 Ciesta time! Lunch, area book, and language study (sadly nap time for some!!) :(

5:00 leave apartment again

10:15-10:45 return to apartment

11:30 acostarse

Pretty good schedule right there! I love being able to stay out later because a lot of people we visit we at the last part of the night.  So it´s great, and obviously going to bed later means getting up later! So yeah it´s pretty nice. 

Second thing. IPADS.  We are going to be getting IPADS! Everything will be electronica, so it´ll be way nice to have them l.  And we´ll also be able to use facebook!  It´ll be alot easier to stay in contact with people we meet here on the mission.  We´ll be getting them in May so I´m super excited!

Also this past week was semana santa! Córdoba is one of the best places to be during this week. Saddest thing though I didn´t get any pictures... We didn´t plan to go see any of the processions we just thought that we´d run in to them during the week.  It only happened once, and as I pulled out my camera it was out of batteries.  It was a way cool to sight to see though! People were wearing basically kkk outfits and they just marched around the streets with floats and playing music! I don´t know how we only ran into it one time but it was really cool!

Also on Friday we had zone meeting.  We got 10 baptisms as a zone in the month of March! First time hitting double digits as a zone for me!  Actually I think the most before that was 6.. Anyway 3 of them were from Córdoba so it was nice to participate in this BAPTISM FEST! *everyone in South America starts laughing their heads off*

This week though was definitely a hard week for missionary work for sure.  Mónica was sick/working all week so we didn´t have a time to see her.  And when we set appointments with people they wouldn´t be home.  Our 14 year old investigator Andres told us he believes the Book of Mormon is true! But sad thing is he isn´t willing to come to church or to be baptized...  It´s hard because there isn´t anyone his age in the branch, so we´re basically his only friends.  I know one day Andres will be baptized though, maybe when he´s older and more mature.   I´ll do what I can to help him realize why he needs to come to church and be baptized though.  We need new investigators so this week is going to be the "week of finding Córdoba".  We have planned to completely blow the weekly standards of new investigators out of the roof!  It´s 5 and we set a goal to get 2 everyday so 14 news!  I think it´s possible and even though we may not reach it we´ll do great things trying!

I am truly greatful to have this knowledge of the restored gospel.  Everyone here is so confused when it comes to religion and we have the answer!  All they need to do is listen and open their hearts!  I´m so greatful for this knowledge and for prophets and apostles that guide us.  Just imagine if the whole world listened to conference this last weekend and how much good would come of it.  I know that Christ suffered for us and he died on the cross and more importantly he resurrected! He is risen.  He loves us all and if we humble ourselves and strive to be like him he will make our "weak things become strong unto [us]". I have so many weaknesses and I´ve also had to do a lot of humbling on the mission and I am just so greatful for the Atonement of Christ and how we can all become better and become clean through him.

Love you all,

Elder Stephens

Hello this week was a great one! First thing is we had a baptism!!! We baptized Josefa on Saturday and it was great! I did the ordinance and it was the first time for me so it was a great experience! She couldn´t be baptized normally because of her health so we had her sit on her butt and after I said the baptismal prayer I laid her down like she would on a bed and I brang her back up.  So it was successful! The only people who showed up were the branch president, the branch mission leader, and their families so I was disappointed with the showing of the members.

And then yesterday during church was a great time! We had two people show up without even us talking to them or anything.  One of them was a man named Rafael who just showed up on his own out of curiosity.  The other was a women named Loli who is a friend of one of our members.  During our gospel principles class she started bawling, the spirit was so strong and it was so awesome to see the spirit work in her so much.  She kept saying "I´ve attended so many churches in my life and never have a felt anything like what I feel right now." It was so awesome but she lives in a town an hour away from Córdoba.  It´s still in our area though so if everything works out we´ll be able to visit her! 

My comp right now is so ready to go home though. He is always talking about home and is really unfocused.   Last night when we went to bed he was talking to me for like an hour just listing all things that he misses and that´ll he´ll be able to do when he gets home.  I told him that these last two weeks we´ll be super good and get a whole bunch of work done!  And hopefully we won´t be talking about home too much but it´s really hard not too haha.

Today was the best p-day ever! So Sunday there were 3 Germans and one american who lives in Germany that are members of the church.  They are touring all the places here in Spain and were in Córdoba so they decided to go to church here.  So we were talking to them after church (they all spoke almost perfect English) and they invited us to come see some tourist spots here in Córdoba the next day (today).   We were literally with them all day and it was so fun to get to know them!  I definitely didn´t expect that here in Spain I´d be hanging out with a bunch of Germans, but it was super fun! We got to see a bunch of places here in Córdoba that I have never visited so I´ll be sending home some good ones.

I´m literally so happy to be in this wonderful country with these wonderful people the mission is literally the best thing in the world.  I love it so much!!

Have a great Easter everyone! And mom happy birthday I LOVE YOU!!! :)

Hola! This week was literally so good!!! And crazy! So we contacted this guy named Muzhamed this last week from the middle east and he gave us an address and set up an appointment for the next day.  When we went to his apartment an Ecuadorian women answered the door and said that he didn´t live there.. But we kept on talking and we ended setting an appointment with her for a different day. She accepted and this week we visited her and guess what she is the sister of Nancy our investigator! Her name is Mónica and she is so awesome! She has a son and a daughter years 7 and 6.  She is in the process of divorce right now so she´s in a hard point in her life.  But she wants to know things about the gospel and she came to church yesterday with her kids and really enjoyed it! She´s pretty much never done anything religous in her life and it was so awesome to see her come to church and feel the spirit! I was super worried about her not feeling comfortable in our branch but the members did a really good job welcoming her and her kids in!  

So this Friday we had a lesson with Antonio our investigator who was planned to get baptized this Saturday.  He tells us that Sunday night he was going to visit his Sister for 2 weeks in a different city in Spain and won´t be able to make it to his baptism so we´ll need to change it.  We asked him if he´d rather do it before he left or after and he said before.  So we were like oh shoot ok we´ll try to do it tomorrow so we call the branch president and he told us no he didn´t want to rush the baptism and told us to wait the 2 weeks.  I was ok with that but my companion really wanted the baptism to go down so he starts calling everyone when we get home so that we could be able to baptize Antonio before he left to visit his sister.  Elder Durfey called president deere and he told us that we should do everything we can to get Antonio baptized this last weekend.  So after calling a bunch of people and we finally got the permission from the branch president to go ahead and have Antonio´s baptism yester after the Sacrament meeting! So we organized everything in one day and it was so stressful because Antonio still needed to be interviewed by our district leader and after a long weekend everything worked out and the baptism happened yesterday!!!!! It was so awesome I don´t think I´ll ever be so involved in organizing a baptism like that ever again haha.

So crazy story that happened last night. So we are visiting the part member family I wrote about last week.  Elder Durfey and I are sitting in a room with Abuelita and also of a sudden we here Mati yell and we turn around and Marta (her daughter) is just laying on the floor. We go up to her and she was unconscious for a few seconds but regains it hardly. Apparently Mati walked in and saw Marta laying there.  So the whole family starts screaming at her telling to to wake up and my companion and I tell them that´s not what we should do and we need to be calm and careful with her.  So long story short we call the ambulance and they come and get her and take her to the hospital.  We were there all night basically so right now I´m super tired.  Marta regained consciousness but didn´t remember anything.  She thought her name was Ana and that she was 14 years old. She didn´t recognize her mom or anyone.  She was like that for a really long time but this afternoon she regained her memory and is normal and she just had an attack of some sort. She has "Syncope" or something so that has happened a few times.  It was super scary though I´m really happy that she recovered and is doing ok now.

Well I wish I had time to write more details about the story but my comps ready to go so until next week!

Gutten Morgan!

This week was a good´n.  We started to work a lot with less actives this week and try to bring them back to chuch.  We found a less active named Nieves and she is definitely more Catholic than she is Mormon.  She doesn´t remember anything really about the church and doesn´t remember about Joseph Smith that much at all other than he plays an important role in our church.  Her 8 year old son is going through the communion for the Catholic church.. So basically she is an investigator who has already been baptized.  She´s so nice though!! Also we started going to visit a less active family who just completely love the missionaries!  We are going to start going over there a lot to do family scripture study. The mom told us she doesn´t feel the spirit anymore and maybe it was because she´s not going to church.  So we told her going to church would definitely help her out.  So hopefully we can get them going back.  The family who lives there is the grandma who we call "Abuelita", the mom named Mati, a 16 almost 17 year old daughter named Marta  (who isn´t baptized) and a recently baptized 12 year-old son named Javi.  We just got Javi to commit to a 3 day stake youth activity that starts in a couple weeks so that´s great!

Investigators we taught Antonio twice and we almost have all the lessons taught to him.  Josefa we saw a few times and hopefully here baptism will come through this next week! She is the funniest person to teach because she just jumps so off topic so fast.  We have to go one sentence at a time because usually she interupts us to tell us a story after each  one.  It´s so funny the things she says though.  It happened at least twice where I just bursted out laughing and my companion would look at me and be like what the heck.  I think that´s happening because now that I understand the language everything is 10X funnier in Spanish. But I´m loving it here and the mission definitely is the place to be right now.

Have a good week and don´t forget to say your prayers :)

Elder Stephens

Wassssup? This week was a good´n. Had my last week with Elder Turley and I´ll for sure miss him a lot. He flies home Thursday to Mesa and he is excited to be with his family.  But this week we changed the baptism date for our investigator Antonio to the last week in March.  He doesn´t want to rush the baptism and wants to make sure he knows all the things he´s going to be covenanting to the Lord when he gets baptized.  He has a testimony and wants to get baptized though!  So that´s a great blessing and we are going to meet with him twice a week up to his baptism.

We also started teaching a guy from Honduras named Roger.  He is 24 and he´s studying here in Córdoba for the next year or so and we found him looking for someone that we contacted earlier that week.  He´s been to our church in his country a few times and he really interested in our message.  We taught him the restoration so we´ll see what happens there!

Also I had a crazy experience this week. So Friday morning we went to visit an investigator named Ignacio.  He´s a Spaniard in his upper 40´s who´s been in the hospital a lot lately and we haven´t seen him so we went to his house to check up on him.  A Nigerian women - who aparently was his girlfriend I´m really curious to know how that happened - let us in the apartment and she told us he was sleeping in his room.  As we go in to his room he was on his bed but he definitely wasn´t sleeping.. He... Well... Uh... Yeah he was dead.  So we called the ambulance and we had to call around first because no one there knew what the ambulance´s number was.  So when we got it we called the ambulance and they were "busy" and told us to call the local police.  Way to be Spain! So officers came over and eventually the ambulance came and everything got under control.  There´s a bunch of weird/graphic details that I´m not going to write home but I´ll just leave it was a crazy experience.

Anyways got to love the mission! So transers this week I´m staying here in Córdoba for my 4th transfer and my new companion his going to be Elder Durfey! I don´t know too much about him so we´ll see how it goes.  And also they combined my area with the other area in Córdoba.  The city used to be split in half but now it´ll just be me and my comp, 40 active members, and 200,000 other people that need to hear the gospel. WO LET´S GO!